Gareth Southgate extends contract as England Under-21 boss

The 44-year-old has been at the Young Lions helm since August 2013 and has signed a new deal to stay until 2017.

Southgate replaced former England team-mate Stuart Pearce following their embarrassing exit from the European Championship in Israel.

Southgate, who is also head of national teams at St George's Park, has since successfully overseen progress to this summer's finals in the Czech Republic and has now committed to his role for a further year.

He said: "I am enjoying my work at the FA and with St. George's Park coming to life with innovation and development across our football disciplines I believe we now have some solid foundations in place.

"England DNA is evolving but anyone who has seen our development teams play - including the under-21s - will know that many of the principles can already been seen in the way we go about our work.

"Whilst I am certainly happy with the direction we are heading and the progress made so far, we have enormous work ahead of us to raise the level to where we would like to be.